"You know I have always worshiped you," he said simply and reverently.
She moved up in a sisterly way to him and looked into his face.
"Clay--Clay--but you must not--I have told you--I am engaged."
He did not appear to hear her. Already his mind was away off in the hills where his eyes were. He went on: "Now, over there I struck a stratum of rotten limestone--it's a curious thing. I traced that vein of coal from Walker County--clear through the carboniferous period, and it is bound to crop out somewhere in this altitude--bound to do it."
"Now it's just this way," he said, taking her hand without being conscious of it and counting off the periods with her fingers. "Here is the carboniferous, the sub-carboniferous--" She jerked her hand away with what would have been an amused laugh except that in a half conscious way she remembered that Harry had held her hand but half an hour ago; and it ended in a frigid shaft feathered with a smile--the arrow which came from the bow of her pretty mouth.
He came to himself with a boyish laugh and a blush that made Helen look at him again and watch it roll down his cheek and neck, under the fine white skin there.
Then he looked at her closely again--the romantic face, the coil of brown hair, the old gown of rich silk, the old-fashioned corsage and the rich old gold necklace around her throat.
"If there's a queen on earth--it's you," he said simply.
He reddened again, and to divert it felt in his satchel and took out a rock. Then he looked across at the hills again:
"If I do trace up that vein of coal and the iron which is needed with it--when I do--for I know it is here as well as Leverrier knew that Neptune was in our planetary system by the attraction exerted--when I do--"
He looked at her again. He could not say the words. Real love has ideas, but never words. It feels, but cannot speak. That which comes out of the mouth, being words, is ever a poor substitute for that which comes from the heart and is spirit.
"Clay," she said, "you keep forgetting. I say I--I am--was--" She stopped confused.
He looked hurt for a moment and smiled in his frank way: "I know it is here," he said holding up a bit of coal--"here, by the million tons, and it is mine by right of birth and education and breeding. It is my heritage to find it. One day Alabama steel will outrank Pittsburgh's. Oh, to put my name there as the discoverer!"